I didn't put my NASA story on the list because I consider my career there to have been largely a failure, but there is a luck story behind that as well: I never

I didn't put my NASA story on the list because I consider my career there to have been largely a failure, but there is a luck story behind that as well: I never actually applied for my NASA job. I got it because I was a grad student and my Ph.D. advisor got offered a job (from one of his Yale buddies) and took me and another one of his students with him. And the only reason I had the advisor that I did was because I had applied to Stanford and MIT and both of them rejected me, so I was stuck at Virginia Tech. And the only reason I went to Virginia Tech instead of Stanford or MIT, both of which had admitted me as an undergrad, was because VT offered me a full scholarship and I have had a life-long aversion to being in debt. Also, the girls at VT were better-looking. :-)